Penned by Alfred Rosenberg, a top aide to Adolf Hitler, the diaries, according to Reuters, contain notes on, among other things, -- plans to carry out the Holocaust.

Homeland Security Investigators are credited with tracking down the diaries, which Reuters says were in the possession of Herbert Richardson, a Canadian academic who operates a publishing house in a non- descript building on Portage Road in the village.

"I think even ten years now after it was formed, people still don't have a complete concept of all that Homeland Security does," said Steve MacMartin, a retired Homeland Security Investigator, who now directs Homeland Security Studies at Medaille College in Buffalo.

The agency's division of Cultural Property, Art and Antiquities, dedicated to among other things the recovery of missing or stolen cultural heritage, has recovered more than 7,000 artifacts since 2007, ranging from artwork, to dinosaur bones, to manuscripts.

Now it can add to that list the diaries which were used as key evidence to prosecute Rosenberg as a war criminal at the Nuremberg trials, but which disappeared shortly thereafter.

t has long been thought they were secretly taken out of Germany and to America by one of the Nuremberg prosecutors, Robert Kempner.

Though quite familiar with how such investigations might be carried out due to his former career experience, MacMartin is in many ways just like so many others: looking forward to Thursday and hearing more.

"I'm interested to see what happens Thursday when the press conference comes out, about how they got onto this, why they got onto it, what they asked ....I'd like to know how it (the diaries) got here too. I think it will be a fascinating story, given the historical significance of the artifact," he said.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for Delaware is expected to participate in Thursday's news conference, and although that might lead some to speculate that Richardson might face prosecution, a spokesperson for the office would only say, "We have no comment on Mr. Richardson."

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